No Warnings

As I write this I am just north of Tulum facing the Caribe at Bahia Soliman. You would think that if a big storm were to be headed in this direction, over the sea and into my front door, I would hear about it before it arrived. And you'd be wrong. Sometimes I'm just the very last to know.

On Monday and Tuesday, there were incredibly high winds and tons of rain. How odd, I thought. It sounds worse than last year's tropical storm. It's howling and rumbling and roaring. And the rain drops are like grapes. It hurts when they hit. And they are loud on the cocs. And the roof seems to be doing the kind of drip it does only when there are immense, persistent tropical rains. Maybe, I thought, it's just bad June weather. After all, I don't see any alerts on the Internet. Or in my email. And the usual weather sites just predict thunderstorms. This is what it says every day, regardless of the weather. Nothing unusual. I shrugged.

After all, I thought, it is June. And in June this area tends to get thunderstorms. And some of those, sometimes, have high winds. It sounds bad, but I'm dry. I've got great books. I'll wait for it to blow over. It's just bad weather. Nothing very important.

Today I found out that Hurricane Arlene was named last night, and that it's apparently a consolidation of what we had here. Apparently, it's now raging away in the Bay of Campeche, just northwest of here, and Tampico has high wind. Tamaulipas look out!

And now, all of the turtle grass that got deposited on the beach on Monday and Tuesday makes complete sense:

And now that it has passed us by, and today is yet another exquisitely beautiful day: